Animated advert

We're going to spend £100 and advertise a promotion in the Welcome to Yorkshire newsletter that goes out in June. It goes to something like 7,500 tourist businesses in the region, of which about 5,000 are WTY members. There's no one else advertising in it and it has a good click through record. Will be interesting to see if we get any bites.

Here's the mock up I sent to Nick...

And here's the very quick animated gif he made with it. This is not the finished article, by any means, but interesting to see the process...

http://fouroverfive.com/ad.html

Joely's party

Did some very quick illustrations for Joely's party invites and also as prize tickets for a game at the party itself, where all the kids will win an ice cream.

Was quite chuffed with the invite. It really didn't take long at all and looks pretty much how I wanted - nice and summery and homemade and outdoorsy.

These are the instructions for the short straw game. The ice cream illustration is the first time I've really 'painted' with my drawing tablet and it worked pretty well.

Close up of the ice cream. I might try something like this again, maybe a painting of the children.

What went online

These have been online for a while but I've not got round to adding anything here. Nick did a pretty good job of tidying up the very rough PSD files that I gave him, adjusting colours etc. Some work better than others, but here they all are, in their glory...

This is the homepage image representing 'standing out from the crowd', 'responsive web design', 'research' and 'business goals'.

This one appears at the foot of the homepage, with contact details.

These two illustrate the six main aspects of the way we work. I think Nick and I both feel these are the least successful. I do anyway, because they're neither one thing nor another. A bit similar in style to the homepage images, but not exactly the same. Not different enough either.

A little illustration to liven up the page about us.

A pretty naff map, that isn't at all what Nick was imagining but we just ran out of time.

And finally, another little character on the about us page. I originally had the text in a normal font, which I preferred but Nick wanted it handwritten. He wasn't that keen on the result and nor was I, but again, it was all in a rush. Can all be tweaked later. The little guy is proving quite useful, though, for other things like an ad we're working on.

Sketchy line drawings

At Nick's request, I then looked at the bit of our site about 'How We Work'. These are just sketches to figure out how we might illustrate the way we describe our working processes.

 Above: "Fast and transparent"

Above: "Direct"

Above: "Content-driven"

Above: "Mobile First"

I failed to come up with anything at all for "Responsive" or "Flexible", but then I did only spend about 2 minutes on each one. This was done with a much finer pencil size (13, I think), and a more scribbled approach. A long way to go with these, but they actually don't look half bad on the site already.

Let's talk

Giddy with success, I had a bash at something to fill the panel which encourages people to call us. This one was a hit with Nick and went straight into the site with no changes apart from colour tweaks so it matches the site.

Simplifying cartoon-style illustrations

Next up came the challenge to find a way to make our website more visual in the absence of examples of our work. The idea was to produce lively, cartoon-y images to illustrate what we do.

I didn't spend too long on these because I wasn't sure Nick would even like them. It was more to see if the concepts even illustrated the thing it was supposed to describe. He seemed to like them, but wanted them to be simpler so I tweaked them a bit.

First versions and tweaked versions shown together below. I drew these in PhotoShop using my Wacom tablet, using pencil size 45 and varying the weight to get a wobbly outline.

Above: illustrates "Business Goals". The tweaked version gives the arrow more emphasis, removes extraneous lines and reduces the shadow.

Above: this one illustrates "Research". Nick wanted fewer lines on the magnifying glass. I took the chance to improve the shape of the page that's sticking out, and to make more of the bit that's being magnified.

Above: this is "Responsive Web Design" i.e. how we design websites that scale automatically from desktop to tablet to smart phone. Again, the tweaked version has fewer lines. I think this is the least successful of the four images. Can't put my finger on why exactly. The original is more successful, perhaps.

Above: and this one is "Standing Out From the Crowd". I definitely think the tweaked version works better on this one. I like the globe just solid colours, no lines, and the pop of pink (Nick's intervention) works better than grey.

Once the site is live, I'll update this post with a screengrab, because the colours are a bit different on the real thing.

Identity mock ups

So, the first little illustration task was to draw a few things for logo concepts to be placed on. I did these with fine liners on paper and then scanned them in and adjusted the levels a bit.

They are okay, I think, but not great.